The Very First Bond Girl Somehow Just Cameoed in the Oldest Sci-Fi Show Ever
When you think of the very first "Bond Girl"—as in a woman starring opposite 007 in a James Bond film—it's natural to assume that we're talking about Ursula Andress who, famously played Honey Ryder in 1962's Dr. No. But, before Bond (Sean Connery) meets Honey, he's playing cards against a formidable woman named Sylvia Trench (Eunice Gayson). Because she's such a big deal, she even appears in the opening moments of the next movie, 1963's From Russia With Love.
And now, in a very strange Easter egg, the character of "Sylvia Trench," now played by Niamh Marie Smith, has appeared in a different form in the latest episode of Doctor Who. As the longest-running sci-fi show of all time, Doctor Who has existed for just slightly less as long as James Bond movies; the first episode debuted in 1963, one year after Dr. No.
In the new Christmas Day Doctor Who special—"Joy to the World"—the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa, who you may remember as one of the Kens in Barbie) finds himself in a time travel hotel that empties out into various points in history. For Doctor Who, the plot is predictably all over the place in terms of time-travel shenanigans, but one of the time periods he seems to emerge into is the 1960s, in which a woman is writing a letter on the Orient Express. This character is unnamed in dialogue, but as pointed out by Mashable, the credits identify her as "Sylvia Trench."
The joke here is that Sylvia Trench is clearly done with James Bond and is now writing a love letter to a woman. This is a bit of a reference to the various Bond novels, in which some characters, like Pussy Galore, were 100 percent gay. And, in Anthony Horowitz's 2015 novel Trigger Mortis, Galore does leave Bond for another woman, too!
This Doctor Who episode is written by Steven Moffat, who, along with Mark Gatiss also was the co-creator of the Benedict Cumberbatch-starring series Sherlock. In THAT series, several references were made to James Bond, including the idea that Bond's boss M might even exist within the Sherlock Holmes universe.
Clearly, Moffat loves putting Bond Easter eggs in his writing and was having a bit of fun here. We can imagine this "Sylvia Trench" as the same woman who appeared in Dr. No and From Russia With Love. Or not. But, we can all agree that if James Bond ever got ahold of time travel, it would either be the worst thing ever or the greatest.